Frank commentary from an unretired call girl

Frequently Told Lies

And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. – John 8:32

I recently realized that because the prohibitionists have a set of stock lies they can repeat in an article or internet comment, someone trying to refute them is forced to link to a number of different sources to debunk those lies. In order to make things easier, I’ve decided to consolidate responses in one place; in a few days I’ll replicate this column as a static page, to which I can add new lies which may appear and new statistics with which to debunk them. This column only covers factual claims; emotional arguments of the “no little girl dreams of being a prostitute” variety are covered in “Amazingly Stupid Statements”.

LIE: The average age at which a woman enters prostitution is 13.TRUTH: If this were true, there would have to be huge numbers of toddler-prostitutes to balance the many, many women who start later in life, such as to support themselves after divorce. Even underage prostitutes start at an average of 15-16, and only 15% of teen hookers (themselves a small minority of all sex workers) enter at an age below 13. A conservative estimate for the average age at which women enter the trade is 25. The “average debut at 13” lie was a purposeful distortion by anti-sex crusader Melissa Farley, who misrepresented the average age of first noncommercial sexual contact (which could include kissing, petting, etc) reported by underage girls in one 1982 study as though it were the age they first reported selling sex; the actual average age at which the girls in that study began prostitution was 16.

LIE: The average age of death for a prostitute is 34.TRUTH: That figure was derived from a 2003 study which examined all of the reports of murdered street workers in Colorado Springs from 1967-1999, and discovered that the average age of death of those victims was 34. In other words, nobody who wasn’t murdered was included in the figure. It’s like using the average age of dead soldiers in a war to proclaim “the average man who joins the military dies at 21”.

LIE: 100,000-300,000 children are “trafficked” every year in the United States.TRUTH: That myth is a distortion of an absurd estimate from the Estes & Weiner study of 2001, which estimated that number of “children, adolescents and youth (up to 21) at risk of sexual exploitation”. “Sex trafficking” was the least prevalent form of “exploitation” in their definition; other things they classed as “exploitation” included stripping, consensual homosexual relations and merely viewing porn. Two of the so-called “risk factors” were access to a car and proximity to the Canadian or Mexican border. When interviewed by reporters in 2011, Estes himself estimated the number of legal minors actually abducted into “sex slavery” as “very small…We’re talking about a few hundred people.”

LIE: Prostitution destroys the self-esteem of women involved in it.TRUTH: Though only a small fraction of street workers report an increase in self-esteem after entering harlotry, they represent less than 15% of all prostitutes. 97% of escorts in one study reported an increase in self-esteem, compared with 50% of Nevada brothel workers; another study found that 75% of escorts felt their lives had improved since starting the work, 25% reported no change and 0% said their lives were worse. Anyone who has ever personally known any sex workers of any kind knows that if anything, their self-esteem is often too high.

66 Responses

100 percent of men pay for sex. Let’s just get that established as a firm fact.

Yeah sure – we’ve all met “That Girl” in a bar and took her out into the parking lot for some fun on the hoods of our car without so much as buying her a glass of water along the way – but that’s extremely rare.

The rest of the 99.9999 percent of the time we’re paying for it. Ask a girl out – we’re paying for the movie and dinner and usually we don’t even “get it” on the first date – we have to make several “approaches” on the target until a successful “hit” is logged.

(Actually, with the girl on the hood – I think I paid for that too. She wasn’t good looking and one of my submarine buddies saw me with her. He told the whole fucking boat – and I got shit for that for months.)

Get married – you’re still paying for it. Don’t believe me? Quit your job, open a beer, and sit on your ass watching Jerry Springer reruns and see just how many times your wife will take you to her thigh. Not many.

The fact is – the more assets you put at a woman’s disposal – the more sex you get as a man.

I had a buddy – he lived in an apartment in Waikiki. This guy had a girl living with him – she paid no rent – she cooked no food – she just had sex with him. Sex was her only contribution.

Try walking up to a girl and saying … “Hey Sis, you know I’m hot … you know I got it “goin’ on” … I will make love to you soooooo good … let me move in with you and … ain’t got no money, can’t pay no rent – but I will fuck you any time you want!”

See how many takers you get on that! LOL – NONE!

It’s natural for men to have to pay something for sex … there’s nothing wrong with it but every one needs to face reality that we ARE ALL paying for it!

LIE: Nearly all men buy sex OR a small, pathological group of men buys sex.

Depends on how you define “pay for sex.” In the narrow sense of directly paying a woman for sex, you are right in that only a narrow majority of men probably do this. (This percentage was undoubtedly higher before criminalization and stigmatization of sex work.) But if you count the cost of courting a woman and proving to her that her would-be lover is a good provider, then all men pay.

I’m a woman, and I can hand-on-heart say that no man has *ever* paid for sex with me. I pay my own way in restaurants and bars. In my current primary relationship I pay half the mortgage and half the bills.

I’m not saying this as a judgement on people who do it differently (anything that happens between consenting adults is a-okay and none of my business), but just to make the point that you do not HAVE to pay for sex. You choose to pay for sex because it is the way that you are comfortable interacting with women.

I’m not exactly sure what you mean by ‘strings’, but I also do not trade sex for other things (like chores). Again, I’m not judging people who sell / trade sex (and I have considered paying for it myself). I’m just making it clear that this isn’t the *only* way sexual liaisons happen. It doesn’t have to be a transaction and for lots and lots of people, it isn’t.

The joke is that men who don’t want long term relationships or marriages pay prostitutes to leave at the end of the session they have. Some men simply don’t find relationships rewarding and are all about the sex.

Thank you for replying, xx. I congratulate you on your independence, but I would like to make a thought experiment. Let’s say a young woman meets a very handsome man and they hit it off. But the man does not have any money, and he doesn’t have a job. He also show any signs that he is going to be getting a job soon. Which means the man doesn’t bring anything to the table. Is it smart for this young woman to go out with him indefinitely?

Since we’re dealing entirely in the anecdotal here: I’ve seen more than a few advice column submissions consisting of women writing in to ask whether they should/how they could go about dumping their unemployed layabout boyfriends.

I’m not sure that your hypothetical is relevant. Dating / being in a long term relationship is different to sex. If both your hypothetical people want to have sex with each other, they should go right ahead. If they want to keep doing that on a regular basis for a long period of time, they should keep doing it.

If they want to commit to each other in ways that go beyond sex (e.g. move in together, have children together, etc.) that’s when questions of financial assets, etc. come into play. Although the best decision would still depend on the people in question. If she has a great job, and doesn’t see his lack of income as an issue, why shouldn’t she support him? Or if money isn’t important to her, why shouldn’t they live together without any?

eddie: That sounds like just about all of my stepdaughter’s boyfriends, for over 20 years – gigolos without whatever it takes to hook up with a woman that could actually support them. (If that’s even possible.) But she’s not normal.

Of course, and I’ve made this point many times myself. In this context, I’m defining “paid for” as a direct cash transaction. And in fact, I believe one of the reasons recent surveys generate such absurdly low numbers is that they define “paying” much too narrowly, using terms like “patronize a prostitute” which allow men to mentally weasel out with thoughts like, “I only paid once, that’s not ‘patronizing'” or “she was a stripper, not a prostitute”.

I know you have made this point many times – I’m just trying to reverberate some truth here.

I would compare buying sex to buying or renting housing. There’s many unique ways to do it. You can PAY CASH directly – or you can use a plethora of mortgage options to come up with a long term arrangement for payment. A hotel manager doesn’t pay a thing to live in his housing – but he’s “paying” for it through his service to the hotel.

I’m not cheapening marriage when I say that “all men pay for it”. The fact is – if you girls had no vagina or we weren’t conditioned by evolution to even be slightly interested in it – then we would talk to you as much as we do our male buddies at work – which isn’t much. There would be no marriages.

Now a lot of “religionists” tell me “marriage” is about having kids and a family. I can almost buy that except for the fact that when I was a young man – I was more interested in playing with women than I was in having a family. Marriage isn’t JUST about sex but it’s the primary glue that holds it together – I think. At least in the beginning.

Women pay for what they get out of it too. In return for some “providership” or “partnership” (in which assets are earned by both parties) … they end up doling out sex at times that they consider less than optimal – or when they don’t have the slightest interest in it at all. Additionally – they get pregnant and have kids – and usually end up being the primary caregiver to those kids.

We have this concept of “free” that is totally unrealistic. I can assure you that people of wealth don’t consider ANYTHING to be free. Time invested in something – is worth something. Everything is bought and sold … that’s the nature of human relations and something the “occupy” crowd doesn’t get. The only thing free – is AIR. Water is NOT free – you always had to invest time in getting to water … or move and build a shelter near a source of it.

“Free Health Care” – is NOT free. Those of us who work are PUNISHED by the government to give up our assets to pay it for you – freeloader. Nothing the government can provide you is “free” – it may be “free” to you – but we’re the ones paying for it!

Wow I feel so sorry for the men and women you know if that is what marriage is like for them.

As an alternative, how about people who alternate who pays for dates or go dutch? Relationships with give and take over many aspects and where sex is the result of mutual attraction and enthusiastic consent? Perhaps in some relationships where earning power is very uneven the people involved might consider it fairer if the one with a bigger paycheck takes on more of the financial burden, and obviously if kids are involved there’s a whole other kind of work to consider, but I find your transactional analysis so dispiriting, and this is from an economist who studies couples’ domestic decision-making!

Are you married? If you are – I just can’t believe you’ve never had sex with your husband when he wanted it and you really weren’t all that “enthusiastic” to do it. If you’re single – well then all this is being masked for you at the moment – since you can choose when and where you want to have sex based on how you feel at the moment.

Dutch dates? Why on Earth would a woman go for THAT deal? Dutch … that’s when a girl goes out with her homosexual guy-friend … that’s what “dutch” is for. Hell – I’ve dated Dutch women and even they pretend to not know what that is when I take them out! LOL

I actually dated one girl that ASKED me out. She was a Machinery Repairman and came down to the submarine one day to check out the periscope because we were having a problem with it. She wasn’t gonna fix it – just came aboard to document the problem and take pictures. I took her up to the top of the sail and she crawled out on it to check things out. When she did – I guess she noticed ME checking HER out. I did a lot of staring at her ass and her crotch – she kind of sat in this kind of modified “split” that was interesting.

Well – I wasn’t going to ask her out because this was the time I was taking shit for nailing ugly chicks too often – so I swore them off and was looking for a hot chick to date and bring down to the boat to erase all the “coyote karma” then surrounding me. Top it off, the CO’s wife was Honolulu PD and she caught me in a Waikiki Gay Bar with another ugly chick, a nurse named Mary. It was Mary’s idea to go into this gay bar – which she said would be fun and it actually kind of was. But the CO’s wife caught me and TOLD the CO and fucker told everyone on the boat by the time I showed for work the next morning! I was taking a lot of shit from the guys – first the ugly chicks – now the gay bar. :(

This Sailor girl wasn’t ugly – but she was no beauty queen either and I needed a beauty queen to redeem myself.

But after she left the boat – she called me on the boat’s phone from her office to ask me out to lunch at “Pizza Hut” and the invitation was specifically … “Let me buy you Pizza, Krulac”. Otherwise – I would have paid anyway. But I let her pay. However, I asked her out that Friday and took her to Waikiki for an expensive dinner (at Nick’s Fish Market, which only recently closed) that I PAID for.

I didn’t expect anything from her that night … it was only our second date and I never hit on a girl until the third date and even then – I only hit on her then so she would know I wasn’t gay – it was totally fine if she rebuffed me on that date – the “hit” was simply to prove I wasn’t gay – otherwise women start feeling there’s something wrong with you if you don’t aggressively hit on them. I rarely ever got to the third date though since most girls I dated invited me for a dip themselves on the first or second date (girls are too easy man). That’s the way this one was … second date … “Krulac you need to stay at my place tonight!’ and I’m like “Yes, Ma’am I follow orders …”

And she blew me the fuck away! I left the next morning after we had sex again to go surfing with my buddy – but the whole time I’m out in the water surfing I’m thinking of what a loser I am for being out there and leaving that insatiable girl in her bed by herself. So I took her out that night too … and that was all she wrote – she “had” me.

So I dated her awhile because she was a sexual gold mine of freakishness and I tried many times to leave her but I’d get horny and come back – like a fucking smoker addicted to nicotine – I couldn’t quit. Even if I found another girl – nobody tripped my trigger like she did and it was 100 percent sexual I swore to GOD I’d never marry the woman. Well, she was a financial wreck too … I was paying her rent, and paying off her furniture that she bought. Shit, since I was paying for all of it she said I might as well move in – so I did.

And that’s when I found out that this woman – who I thought may be the only woman in world with the sex drive of a man – was really looking for a “provider”. I was handling all her bills (but I never intermingled our bank accounts even though my dick frequently told me I should). She would get drunk … profess that she would be my “wife” someday – I would nail her one last time and leave the next morning – and three days later I’d call her up – she’d say some bullshit – so would I … and I’d take my Harley right over to her place and we’d fuck for three hours and I’d be right back in the swing. And I kicked myself every time.

Well finally I tested her patience too much – it was clear I was never going to marry her – hell, she knew I wouldn’t even tell my MOM about her and that’s the clear sign a guy ain’t serious girls – if he refuses or “forgets” to tell Momma about you!

So when I went on deployment she found another poor submarine schlub and whipped the sexual charisma on him – and he swallowed the bait whole and married her within two weeks! That’s how good she was folks – and that’s how much self control I had! She had worked on me for six months this other loser folded like a bad poker player in TWO WEEKS!! That marriage lasted two years. She kept fucking with me though – cuz when HE went on deployment she’d come down to my boat and invite me to her place for “old time’s sake” and I was proud – I resisted!

Anyway – the moral of the story is – that all started out as a “dutch” date! So just cuz a woman is willing to pay for a date doesn’t mean she’s not looking for a provider. And it’s not just provider – men are semen donors, peanut butter jar openers, someone to put up the tent when you go camping and someone to get up in the middle of the night to check out unexpected noises! All things women need!

Why is what I’m saying “dispiriting” to you? This is the way men and women are – naturally. It’s quite beautiful and symbiotic.

With Libertarians, like with Marxists, it’s all economics all the time. Not that economics isn’t important, not that Libertarians (or Marxists, for that matter) don’t make some damn good observations, but it’s all economics, all transactions, who owns what and who pays whom and how does it all balance out.
Of course, both groups are all about freedom. Just ask them. Or Democrats. Or Republicans. Or… well anybody.

We’ve had this conversation before: I don’t know what kind of “libertarians” you know, but they ain’t the typical libertarians. In fact, they sound a lot more like the kind of pseudo-libertarian straw men Mother Jones and Think Progress enjoy writing dumb screeds against.

Actually, this all-is-economics and everything-is-a-transaction thing is something I find in common between the self-professed libertarians I meet on space groups* and the self-professed libertarians I meet here.** Some other things, like the “Jesus is Lord” level of conviction that NASA’s primary purpose is to keep the rest of us out of space (and their secondary function is to spend as many of MY TAX DOLLARS!! as possible), seems confined to the aforementioned space groups.

I don’t read Mother Jones, though I think I’ve read something in Think Progress at some point. In any case, these people do exist. They’re not some lefty strawman invention and they are out there and they are making noise. And for many of us, they (and a couple of guys named Paul) are the only “libertarians” we ever see.

* I’ll admit that perhaps these folks only think that they’re libertarians. It’s kind of the in thing to be right now, and I can see somebody skimming a few websites and saying, “Yep, that’s me!” and proceeding to spew simplified versions.

** At least a few of these I can be confident checked things out a little more carefully before licking and sticking the label to themselves.

Unfortunately Maggie, the Libertarians I run into who I suspect are either Objectivists or Robert Nozick wannabes) when I post an article on my basic liberaltarian (a name Alan Colmes came up with that I unashamedly stole) related subjects on OpEdNews, are all economics, all the time. They can’t attack my political views: I smack them over the head with everyone from Aristotle to Voltaire to Jefferson to Madison to Lincoln to J.S. Mill to Martin Luther King, Jr. They do attack my economics, which is called the dismal science for a reason. I give the historical examples of where their idea failed, disastrously, and they come back at me with some tautological mathematics that has exceedingly flawed assumptions–the Laffer Curve being my favorite, just for its name.
No Maggie, unfortunately, there are too many people who take the name “libertarian” as a selfish excuse to not have to contribute to the rest of society, rather than what Mill said, “The greatest good for the greatest number.”

I never patronize prostitutes. I treat them as equals.
Dick Cavett told that joke on Saturday Night Live back in the ’70s. So any time anyone uses the word ‘patronize’ in the context of prostitution, that always pops into my head.

Americans generally seem to have this mentality that everyone should pretend they love labor and aren’t in it for the cash. This is particularly prevalent among the managerial and ownership classes. They act like you have a “poor attitude” and no “team spirit” and “team loyalty” if you admit the obvious: many people are simply showing up for a pay check because there are bills to pay and people have to eat!

Anytime I read or hear, “the truth about such-and-such is…” I can be sure that whatever is said is a biased comment, and probably not the ‘truth’. “The truth about” is very much a vogue phrase these days, and is often associated with “industrial quantities” of whatever’s being discussed.

There is a small percentage of very fortunate people who are doing exactly what they want to do, and, even if they suddenly became financially independent, would continue to ‘work’. The vast majority of human beings who are alive or who ever lived spend (or spent) a great deal of their time working because they need (or needed) to to survive.

So yes, prostitutes are ‘driven to it by financial need'; just like 95%+ of the rest of us. And like the rest of us, I’m sure that many of them would be happy if they never had to work again; that if they continued to work, it would be no longer be out of need to survive.

Excellent post! I do a lot of arguing on message boards, I’m sure I’ll be linking to this post a lot. It really helps to have all the arguments in one easy to find source, as you probably know, finding a well-attributed source for statements can be very time-consuming, and I argue on boards where people ask for cites all the time.

Maggie this is an incredibly informative and useful post. I would really love to post it in the reference section of the community I’m working on building (Tales from the Trade on Sexualitysanctuary.com with full credit to you of course- in fact if you want you can start and moderate a group all your own within the community. At the very least I will be linking to this post and others – you are already on my blogroll. If you have time and are interested I would REALLY love to discuss the community with you. My intentions are to provide a platform for sex workers of all levels/kinds- sex bloggers to cam girls/guys to dancers to street hos/escorts (I’m the last two) past and/or present as well as clients. The point? Support, education and entertainment maybe even help break a few of these stereotypes and myths. It’s not all hell but its not all roses either. I find that having experienced 5 years of survival sex (which was basically getting paid to get molested and then poisoning (coke)myself with the meagre profits) and 2 years of working indoors totally uncoerced with strong boundaries you know sticking to what’s enjoyable instead of doing what’s expected you know? Anyway I really like your blog and if you find the time please let me know about the post you wrote today. Thank! Julia (Sangsara)

Please, feel free to repost it as you like! I want as many people to see it as possible. I don’t really have time to moderate a board, but I’m happy to be at your disposal as a consultant of sorts; in other words, you can call on me for input any time you like, and reblog or link whatever you think will be useful. :-)

LIE: Prostitution destroys the self-esteem of women involved in it.
TRUTH: Though only a small fraction of street workers report an increase in self-esteem after entering harlotry, they represent less than 15% of all prostitutes.

I suggest replacing the word “they” with something more specific, because it isn’t obvious that “they” means “street workers” rather than “those who report…”.

LIE: A very large fraction of sex workers are below 18.
TRUTH: In legal forms of sex work, virtually none are; …

Could you expand on this? In much of Europe and even parts of the US, the age of consent is 16. Several countries have recently raised the limit for sex workers, probably due to US pressure; the Netherlands used to allow 12, but now sets it at 18. It would be interesting to know if these changes in the law have actually helped protect teenagers or merely pushed them into black markets.

In the West, 18 as the lower legal limit for sex work is nigh-universal, so the only under-18s involved are those with fake IDs or at places with really sloppy management. Even Switzerland recently raised its legal working age to 18. And no, such laws never help teenagers; all they do is drive them further underground. But it’s impossible to explain that to lawheads, because they imagine making something illegal causes it to vanish.

This is the sort of “argument” that appealed to me when I was very young, idealistic, and, frankly, unsophisticated. It’s completely emotional and appeals to peoples’ empathy and the urge to protect and end suffering.

Now that I’m an experienced, educated adult, I have to ask: SO WHAT? This lie argument really pisses me off!

First of all, even if this lie were true, so what? Many, many people were abused as children in all kinds of ways. This is tragic and unacceptable. However, it doesn’t mean that society gets to legislate or control their decisions about how they make a living, or their life decisions about ANYTHING, actually. There are women yoga teachers, physicians, teachers, and chefs who were abused.

Furthermore, this argument is extremely offensive because it suggests that abused people 1) are “damaged”, 2) are incapable of deciding what is best for themselves. It also suggests that they are mentally ill, which is completely bigoted and condescending towards the mentally ill population.

It is stigmatizing, shaming, and WRONG to define a person because they were the unfortunate victim of some predatory asshole when they were a kid.

My statement on my Facebook page: “Maggie McNeill strikes again. Folks most of the statistics you hear on TV or read in the newspapers and magazines are intentionally alarmist fabrications from people who don’t believe that women should be allowed to make their own decisions about what to do with their bodies, or who are trying to get contributions from private individuals and grants from the government to support their personal jihad against women being able to make an informed decision for themselves.”

I’m a week late to this, but on the off chance this post gets noticed: Have you or anyone else considered putting together a full FAQ on the subject of prostitution, of which common debunkings may just be one section?

I’m thinking of something similar to subculture introductions or political manifestos in FAQ format, probably more formal and less heated in tone than your usual output.

Yes, I’ve done just that. Email me at my gmail address and I will send you the link. A very large document with links to the sources..I go through all the irrational arguments with documentation and irrefutable evidence.

Hrm. Constructive (I hope) criticism: The tone is more over-the-top than what I had in mind. It reads more like it’s aimed at an audience that already agrees with the thesis. Castigating or condescending to the opposition is an effective way to motivate allies, but I don’t think it is an effective way to convert opponents or neutrals. Also, you should fire your typesetter. Large parts of that document are so visually busy that they are effectively unreadable.

That being said, it certainly appears *comprehensive*, and not being perfect doesn’t make it any less of an impressive collection of information.

Norma Jean, I love you, even if you have made my life more difficult. I’ve been trying to write a follow up to the article I wrote last year “Making Sex a Crime,” when I discovered that you had beat me to the punch. That’s alright, I’m resilient. I instead am going to write an article called “Real Feminism: a Man’s View,” in which I will enlist the aid of all of my sensible women friends–including you and Maggie if you want–to knock down the Neofeminists and their culture.
Meanwhile, I am going to post both “Making Sex a Crime, as well as “THE TRUTH ABOUT COPS, PROSTITUTES, SEX TRAFFICKING AND CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION,” on my Facebook page, with the admonition to share them with everyone.
My very best as always to you and Maggie, separately and together, maybe we will be fortunate enough to change the minds of enough Americans to make a difference.

be sure to friend me on facebook and I will also cross post your article… just my name will get you to me. Send an invite and I will accept. Sorry I made your life more difficult… wasn’t my intent :-) Oh- hopefully the research on the policeprostitutionandpolitics.com website will be of some use to you? There is a ton of it on that site and I HOPE to do a site map soon- otherwise people can’t find all the good stuff! NJ

I am certain that I shall use all 246 pages of it–plus everything else–in the future. And It’s not the first time I’ve been beaten to the punch: when you are the world’s slowest typist (a rousing 16 wpm) you get used to it. I don’t feel bad, Mark Twain could only manage 18 wpm on his typewriter.
By the way, I read your book Cop to Call Girl when it first came out in paperback, and found it a delight: well written, stimulating in both the intellectual and sexual sense, and leaving me wanting more; something I had not experienced in the genre since I read Xaviera Hollander’s The Happy Hooker in the 1970’s.
I will friend you on Facebook as soon as I can get in.

Maggie on Twitter

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